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Alright, so the fact that experiments seeking the Higgs boson have failed proves the Higgs boson does not exist? Better write a paper to CERN quick! Just kidding. You have failed.

Before trying to correct someone else on ‘how science works,’ you’d better check your own claims to avoid public embarrassment. Just saying.

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Yeah, because it’s such a wise use of my time to do THAT…

And as for making you do all the work – If you state a conclusion, I expected you to defend it if you wanted me to believe it. It’s not unreasonable. Instead you just ruined things by continuing to go back to your childish barbs and trolling. So we’re done.

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Like Craig, you’re merely saying, “I’ve heard nothing that makes me believe that what I believe is wrong (notice the 2 uses of the word ‘belief’) here.” Science is making inroads all the time into the foundation that kept this empire standing for centuries.

My arguments may not be the intellectual arguments you feel are worthy of your qualifications. I can’t help that. If you think I’m immature, at least dignify such a claim with something that we can discuss. You’re asking me to do is all work, feel free to share some of the workload.

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This is incredible. You implied that you had this awesome argument against Christianity earlier. I asked you many times to put up or shut up. So finally, you caved in and admitted that you didn’t have an argument at all. And now you’re telling me about simply asserting things without evidence? And what, exactly, have I simply asserted without any good reasons?

“Try a bit of common sense, Glenn, you might actually like it.”

OK Frank, I will try some common sense. I’ll start by not approving such childish comments. That seems sensible.

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God commanded the Israelites to kill the children of certain Canaanite tribes without stating his ‘sufficient moral reasons.’

Even if we factor in that the children may have grown up to emulate their parents’ desire to engage in false worship, how would that justify ‘executing’ them before potentially committing the crime?

Let’s take the worst case scenario:

Fictitiously let’s assume that God discovers that his enemies, heavenly apostates, the demons, are using the bodies of Canaanite children to cause false worship to take place. To have to take their lives the force the bad spirits to return to heaven would mean his ‘omnipotence’ would be insufficient to accomplish this.

Further, despite a single angel being able to execute 185,000 of King Sennacherib’s crack troops, Israelite soldiers must be used to cut the throats of babies. The emotional fallout is not considered and the future consequences of using such rationalising.

This leaves us with the only possiblility that God acts on a whim. Is this acceptable? In fact, even if we can use the ‘reasoning’ that God can foresee the problems that would accrue from letting these children grow, in his omniscience, the bloody results of the imitating of this form of rationalising should also have been seen, and therefore the original action would have been avoided.

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William Lane Craig argues, he feels, on a non-religious basis and as a philosopher, uses ‘blinding by science’ to ‘prove’ his claims, but even he has to use the qualifier “I see no reason to BELIEVE that atheism’s claims are true.” Belief is the key. In the Age of science we need concrete evidence to ‘believe’ that a man can come back from the dead, that miracles can occur before people change their lives to come under the authority of religion.

Hitchens’ arguments are genuine because they are chiefly aimed at common sense that needs no proof, just an acknowledgement and therefore doesn’t need screeds of evidence. Try a bit of common sense, Glenn, you might actually like it.

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You may recognise that I argue much like the much-vaunted late Christopher Hitchens.

If you mean by changing the subject when you’re asked to actually back up your claims, then yes. Yes you do.

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Glenn, your apologist arrogance (I prefer the literal understanding of this word) is that you believe that what you believe is true, a default belief based on the fear of I prefer the literal understanding of this word) theism losing the control it once had before the Age of Enlightenment. This movement, like the Reformation and the fall of the Berlin Wall, came about because some dared to question the status quo. I state again, it is YOU who has to prove the existence of an external agency capable of miracles in a universe that simply does not support such a view.

Do you accept the existence of aliens because some have a religious fervour for such a belief? They say there are thousands who have had abduction experiences, have seen UFOs; why don’t you accept their testimony? Could it be because as an intelligent educated man you seek the wisdom of parsimony before you go off half cocked in belief that likely would earn you a mocking?

Ghosts?

Demons?

Levitation?

All have ‘evidence’ for your consideration.

You may recognise that I argue much like the much-vaunted late Christopher Hitchens. Now this was one intelligent man – well-travelled and thought-provoking in his comments. Have you read his book?

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You can continue to believe as you do about textual transmission, but until you come up with an interesting argument, I’m just not interested.

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Carbon dating tests have consistently shown that the cloth is 12th to 13th century. As to the ‘image,’ this is one of the strongest evidences AGAINST the authenticity of its provenance. If you lay a cloth over a face and body, even if the body can emanate something, the image would be starkly distorted by the action. This has been demonstrated many times by means of experiment.

Would God and Christ leave such a relic? Not if one accepts the scripture in Jude which show that the Devil and Michael argued over the body of Moses. Humans, as both of us know, will worship anything if they believe it has magical properties.

It is quite possible (but by the principle of parsimony, not probable) that it is a painting by Da Vinci (as theorised interestingly using a camera obscura). I like this idea because Da Vinci was a stirrer and left a lot of cheeky symbols in his religious works to show his agnosticism, as he couldn’t state his view directly (look what happened to Galileo).

The point I was making about the parallel between the ‘Gospels’ and the Shroud is that, with the cynical scientific age we live in, much harder evidence is needed than wish-fulfilment and historical acceptance if one wants to maintain the status quo of belief. God’s Word should have been transmitted perfectly if God is omnipotent, omniscient and crystal-clear in his explanation of truth, don’t you think? The fact that we are having this discussion demonstrates ambiguity.

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I gather, then, that you would not accept the ‘explanation’ that – because science cannot yet explain the image on the cloth, that the only solution is that the answer is supernatural?

As far as I know, nobody uses that argument in regard to the shroud of Turin. Not at all! Their argument is that the circumstances (e.g. the fact that it’s a burial cloth, they fact that they think there’s good evidence of its age, the fact that the marks resemble those describe of Jesus), it is probably Jesus’ shroud. This “I don’t know, so God” argument would be a new one.

“You say you’ve written a post on morality. Can you leave the URL in your answer, please.”

No I didn’t. You said you wanted to talk about biblical morality. In reply, I said: “If I’ve written a post on biblical morality that you’d like to discuss, feel free to comment in the comments section of it. But if you just want to bring up a subject out of the blue and get me to spar with you, I’ll pass.”

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Andrew, check the category.

Although on a more general note about the tests that Carrier applies to Jesus, I wouldn’t say “misapply.” If it really does seem weird to apply to same criteria to other people, the criteria probably need improvement. And they do.

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I gather, then, that you would not accept the ‘explanation’ that – because science cannot yet explain the image on the cloth, that the only solution is that the answer is supernatural?

You say you’ve written a post on morality. Can you leave the URL in your answer, please.

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It’d be an honour to meet everyone.

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This annoys me. The logic here is that since he (the guy in the video) could have possibly misled people (whether on purpose or accidentally) then he therefore must be misleading people (whether on purpose or otherwise).

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I haven’t written a thesis on morality. Not sure what you’re looking for.

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So, you’re comparing someone who is alive and of whom we have ample photographic, video, genetic, and contemporaneous written accounts to Jesus.
There are no contemporaneous records of Jesus’ existence at all. Zero. The gospels themselves – the primary ‘records’ – are dated decades after he purportedly existed, rife with supernatural claims and what’s worse is that the only manuscripts we have of the gospels are copies of copies of copies, rife with internal contradictions, omitted or added information, historical blunders and copy errors. Quite human problems for a supposedly divinely gifted text, no?

Sorry are you referring to Alexander the Great or Jesus or the numerous other figures of antiquity which I could say exactly the same about which no sensible person doubts existed.
Alexander’s companion Ptolemy wrote decades after his death, and the accounts we rely on today such as Plutarch and Arrian are from three hundred years later.
The account of Alexander’s life contain supernatural claims that he was the son of Zeus. That his mother was impregnated by a snake, and so on.

And seeing papyrus rots almost every document from the first century we have is a copy of a copy of a copy, and our ability to authenticate the original is much worse than it is with the New Testament.

And of course no figure from Antiquity do we have photos of or there DNA sample.

What was that about special pleading?

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P.S.
Carrier isn’t a figure from Antiquity. We have his birth certificate. Driver’s licence. Marriage certificate. School records. The dude files taxes. He’s published books under his own name. He’s published papers with colleagues who attest to his existence. The day Carrier shuffles off, we’ll have his death certificate too.

LOL, Carrier is not like Jesus because we have written documents recording his birth, schooling and teachings, and if he dies we will have a record of that.

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Can you tell me, please, where to locate your thesis on morality. Thanks.

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I see no particular reason why we should think that God would need the Bible to be transmitted mark for mark, letter for letter, from the original documents right down to us now. As long as the message presented then is the message presented now, where’s the issue? So there’s just no “gotcha” argument here. The study of textual criticism is certainly fascinating and I enjoyed it very much, but it doesn’t yield any dramatic insights that bring the Bible crashing down.

If I’ve written a post on biblical morality that you’d like to discuss, feel free to comment in the comments section of it. But if you just want to bring up a subject out of the blue and get me to spar with you, I’ll pass.

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I’ll try again: If the oldest extant manuscript dates to as late as 200 AD, and if it has been established that are currently known to be 300,000 textual variations, wouldn’t we have expected ‘God’s Word’ to have been transmitted to us 100% accurately, rivalling and bettering the printing press?

Of course, at one time no one ever questioned religion’s role in the transmission of ‘the truth,’ but with the inconvenience of science, so much more is now expected of ‘historical claims’ of a resurrection, miraculous healing, and the resultant spiritual joy.

The appeal to scribes actually is all too easy and doesn’t explain the textual anomalies anyway.

Glenn, I won’t tackle you on a subject you are obviously more qualified than me to argue (I’ll just stand behind Ehrman’s apron strings) but I would like to get on to Biblical morality.

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No no no… I am not saying there is no reason to do what God (supposedly) commands. I’m saying that:

Hmm did you note Glenn’s comment?

You are asking what moral reasons we have for being moral. If there are no moral obligations prior to God’s commands, then the objection becomes nonsense. It’s like asking how many minutes elapsed before time began!

If you expect a *moral* reason for following God’s commands then your complaint is akin to someone complaining that there’s no legal reason to obey the law. You’re simply obligated to obey the law by virtue of being a citizen of a country, so you’re obligated to obey God’s commands (constitutive of moral law) by virtue of the fact that you’re a human being.

Note thus the problem with this:

1) if the reason is simply “because God commanded it” (an appeal to God’s authority), it cannot be an im/moral action – it’s simply obedience of an arbitrary command out of fear of punishment or the promise of reward.

That presupposes this:

Obedience to authority is in itself neither necessary nor sufficient to establish an action as im/moral. Obedience only implies that action is being taken for either fear of punishment or the promise of reward.

Firstly I’d like to point out that obedience implies no such thing. It could simply be that you love and respect the authority in question.

Secondly, your 1) is begging the question as an argument against DCT as you’re presupposing what a moral action is defined by, which is what’s in question.

2.) if, on the other hand, God has rational justifications for his commands (i.e., it is in humanity’s mutual best interest to behave in these ways) then they need not be commands at all – they would objectively and demonstrably valid.

Glenn’s already pointed out that yes, they would be objectively and demonstrably valid *for having a rational justification for doing something*, but if you remove God from the equation then there’s nothing to make it required. That’s the issue here.

Once we recognize the purpose of moral behavior (i.e., to minimize unnecessary suffering and/or maximize well-being)

Ah, out comes the hidden utilitarianism!

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“We have his birth certificate. Driver’s licence. Marriage certificate. School records. The dude files taxes.”

Please find one person who would vouch for the authenticity of those documents and tax returns. And I mean one person who is NOT a believer in his existence (it would be biased to use a believer’s testimony).

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Furthermore, you seem to be blurring, if not outright overlooking, the fact that actions we consider obligatory must first be rational – again removing the need for divine commands.

Mike, as I explained, it does not remove the need at all. According to a causal DCT (the view that you’re commenting on), having a prudential reason to act does not obligate. So this claim is false – having a prudential reason to act does not make divine commands superfluous, since DCT is a theory of obligation.

“No no no… I am not saying there is no reason to do what God (supposedly) commands.”

Well you said: “Why should I care that God has commanded me to do something? Why ought I do what is commanded of me? ”

So you were in fact asking why we should obey God’s commands. I have explained why that question you asked makes no sense if you are talking about moral obligations. But in your new post you just run back into claims that have now been addressed:

1) This actually accumulates more confusion than before. You assume here that if God’s commands are the only reason that actions are actually morally required, then those commands are arbitrary. But this old objection has been repeatedly rebutted. It is simply false if God has any reasons for commanding as God does.

2) Here you just repeat the claim that I have already addressed: Namely, if God has any reasons for commanding as he does – objective reasons – then those reasons are all we need and we can dispense with God’s commands. But I have already explained why this fails: God may have reasons for wanting us to do things based on things like prudence, love for us, beauty and so on. But there is a difference between something being prudent or rational and something being obligatory. So this objection is a non-starter. I’ve commented on that before.

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So you are saying that unless we can prove Jesus` existence using modern methods of identification, he didnt exist?

Surely we should accept the “modern methods of the day” – that is, today we use drivers licenses, facebook pages, etc. In Jesus day it was highly accurate oral traditions which were painstakingly passed on, and eventually recorded at great expense and accuracy.

Nice attempt at being clever, but FAIL.

If you had some comprehension of how letter writing was done in ancient times, and how histories were recorded, you’d be a little less smug.

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You actually show that you don’t believe this. Even though you don’t agree with my position, you do grant that there is a distinction between something being rational or prudent on the one hand, and something being obligatory on the other.

There is indeed a distinction, but it’s not relevant to my point about God’s commands being superfluous; it’s relevant to the final point I made about our interpersonal relationships, and how this factors in with our cooperative social hierarchy. Furthermore, you seem to be blurring, if not outright overlooking, the fact that actions we consider obligatory must first be rational – again removing the need for divine commands.

And you think this is wrong because there’s just no reason to do what God commands. But if you mean no prudent or rational reason, that’s wrong as noted earlier.

No no no… I am not saying there is no reason to do what God (supposedly) commands. I’m saying that:

1) if the reason is simply “because God commanded it” (an appeal to God’s authority), it cannot be an im/moral action – it’s simply obedience of an arbitrary command out of fear of punishment or the promise of reward.

2) if, on the other hand, God has rational justifications for his commands (i.e., it is in humanity’s mutual best interest to behave in these ways) then they need not be commands at all – they would objectively and demonstrably valid.

Something I think you need to consider is that all behavior, including moral behavior, is goal-oriented. Saying we’re obligated to behave morally only makes sense if we establish to what end. Once we recognize the purpose of moral behavior (i.e., to minimize unnecessary suffering and/or maximize well-being), we can discern objectively, without recourse to the divine, what the most rational course of action is.

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1) You suggested an argument against the reliability of the New Testament portrait of Jesus by referring to the many textual variants that exist.
2) I asked you to back this up. You didn’t. You went silent in response to that request.
3) Then when you went on to make another attempted argument, you referred confidently back to your earlier comment about textual variants, as though you had established a point that you could now refer back to as settled.
4) I then stopped you and asked you to go back and back up your first implied argument.

The reason I am doing this is so that you realise – so that the penny drops and it fully dawns on you – that you (and I say this to be honest and maybe even helpful, not rude), that you are genuinely too ignorant of the subject of New Testament studies to know enough of the facts to have the sort of confidence that you should have. You’re shadowboxing like Ali, but if you were to get into the ring on that issue you’d crumple like a featherweight, and by calling you out on your confidence, by asking you to actually make the argument that you’ve implied, I’m hoping to get you to see that you actually don’t know what you’re talking about.

Now, are you going to make the argument or not? If not, just admit that you don’t currently know enough.

As for the second issue (which I’m willing to bet that you also won’t mount a serous argument over), authorship of NT books, you need to widen your reading a little. Even conservative Evangelical New Testament scholars are well aware that there have been questions asked about the authorship of several books that bear Paul’s name. I think the question is relatively easily settled by an appeal to amanuensis (which I’m sure you are familiar with), and I think the case for outright “forgery” there is weak. But if you want to make the case, go ahead. As for Hebrews, what’s the issue? We don’t know who the author is, and given that no author is listed, why would anyone claim that it’s a forgery?

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Saying that a moral action is rationally justified is simply to say that there are rational, objective reasons for taking a certain course of action. But when there are rational reasons to behave morally, it makes authority superfluous.

You actually show that you don’t believe this. Even though you don’t agree with my position, you do grant that there is a distinction between something being rational or prudent on the one hand, and something being obligatory on the other. And this is why divine commands aren’t “superfluous” (you use the word “authority,” but I never did). Sure, if there are rational reasons to want to do the things that God commands, then the obligation to obey God’s commands might be superfluous when it comes to giving us a non-moral, rational reason for doing something. But clearly that is not an objection to my claims, because I never denied this. You can have an action being desirable for a number of reasons without it being required.

You try to anticipate this, but you go wrong:

Now, you’re attempting to preserve God’s relevance by suggesting that only God commanding something can make it obligatory. It may be rational to behave kindly, to live cooperatively, etc., but it’s not obligatory unless God commands as such.

Well, first note that there’s more than one divine command theory of ethics. In one version, the property of being morally required just is (i.e. is identical with) the property of being commanded by God. Obviously you’re not critiquing that theory, because here you talk about God’s commands making things obligatory, which is a causal view. So let’s go with that. Yes, what you outline here is a response to your objection from one who holds that view. And you think this is wrong because there’s just no reason to do what God commands. But if you mean no prudent or rational reason, that’s wrong as noted earlier. And if you mean no morally binding reason (as you seem to), then your objection is incoherent: You are asking what moral reasons we have for being moral. If there are no moral obligations prior to God’s commands, then the objection becomes nonsense. It’s like asking how many minutes elapsed before time began! Even if DCT is false, this objection to it must be dismissed.

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The fact that Christianity (in its many forms)has lasted for 2000 years because it has popular notions and inspirational memes, doesn’t mean, due mainly to the intrusion of the principle of parsimony, that its founder could perform miracles!

Religion has lasted for the same reasons and was probably the first human attempt at science – a way to explain phenomena that could not be readily understood.

But so you know I’m not just carrying a torch for Ehrman, here is an article not by Erhman”

“Seven letters are generally classified as “undisputed”, expressing contemporary scholarly near consensus that they are the work of Paul: Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon. Six additional letters bearing Paul’s name lack academic consensus: Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 & 2 Timothy, and Titus. The first three, called the “Deutero-Pauline Epistles,” have no consensus on whether or not they are authentic letters of Paul. The latter three, the “Pastoral Epistles”, are widely regarded to be pseudepigraphical works, though certain scholars do consider Paul to be the author.[2] There are two examples of pseudonymous letters written in Paul’s name apart from the alleged New Testament epistles: These are the Epistle to the Laodiceans and 3 Corinthians. Since the early centuries of the church, there has been debate concerning the authorship of the anonymous Epistle to the Hebrews, and modern scholars reject Pauline authorship.[3]?”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorship_of_the_Pauline_epistles

You see, it’s not just my imagination or Ehrman’s ‘sensationalism’ that need to take a holiday. There is simply not consensus about certain generally-accepted books in the New Testament that can stand up to scholarly scrutiny.

Thanks for the video, I’m downloading it now.

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Let me start with a premise that I think we ought to be able to agree upon:

* Obedience to authority is in itself neither necessary nor sufficient to establish an action as im/moral. Obedience only implies that action is being taken for either fear of punishment or the promise of reward. To establish an action as im/moral, it must be rationally justified as such independently of authority.

Saying that a moral action is rationally justified is simply to say that there are rational, objective reasons for taking a certain course of action. But when there are rational reasons to behave morally, it makes authority superfluous. For example, God might say, “Love thy neighbor as yourself”. But why? If it’s simply an arbitrary command that is merely to be obeyed, it cannot be im/moral. But if we have rational justification for loving our neighbors as ourselves (if God is commanding it because it’s rationally in our best interest to behave that way) then there’s nothing that God commanding it adds to the equation. The divine command is superfluous.

Now, you’re attempting to preserve God’s relevance by suggesting that only God commanding something can make it obligatory. It may be rational to behave kindly, to live cooperatively, etc., but it’s not obligatory unless God commands as such.

This deeply confuses what it means to be obligated. When we say we’re obligated to do something, we mean two things:

1. We’re obligated to someone
2. We’re obligated for a specific reason, (i.e., “to what end?”)

Why should I care that God has commanded me to do something? Why ought I do what is commanded of me? If you suggest that we’re obligated to obey God because he is the highest authority, you run right back into the first problem: the im/morality of an action must be ascertained independently of authority. If, on the other hand, you suggest that obedience is obligatory for a rational reason (i.e., behaving that way is in everyone’s best interest), you’ve again made God irrelevant. Moral obligation only arises relative to our interpersonal relationships with other rational agents and the social responsibilities those relationships entail.

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That’s hilarious. I’m going to go do some atrocities and use RWAhrens as an excuse. Hope you like prison.

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” You perform an experiment to try to prove something does. If it fails, then you’ve got an indication that it doesn’t.”
A weak indication at best. Someone should tell the higgs-boson folks that they’re being unscientific.

“If you make a positive claim, you’ve got to provide some proof of it.”
If you make a positive scientific claim, then sure you should have evidence. If you make a negative claim and claim it to be a scientific one, then you should equally be required to provide evidence, only that is much harder to do. Remember that you were the one claiming your belief to be scientifically verifiable, not me.

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Cheers
G

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Clearly by putting these links here you do think there is an argument to be made, you just don’t want to make it. So here we sit until you do. Please explain the negative effect that you believe textual variants have on the reliability of the Gospels.

And since you have chosen to add the “forgery” canard to this, feel free to elaborate on that as well. But you don’t get to link drop, pretend there’s really nothing to say, then ask if we can move on. You wanted to make the argument now you can go ahead and make it. Properly. I am familiar with the claims in Forged. Now, your argument please.

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“Most of these [textual] differences are completely immaterial and insignificant….In fact, most of the changes found in our early Christian manuscripts have nothing to do with theology or ideology. Far and away the most changes are the result of mistakes, pure and simple – slips of the pen, accidental omissions, inadvertent additions, misspelled words, blunders of one sort or another….when scribes made intentional changes, sometimes their motives were as pure as the driven snow….And so we must rest content knowing that getting back to the earliest attainable version is the best we can do, whether or not we have reached back to the ‘original’ text.

http://triablogue.blogspot.co.nz/2009/01/bart-ehrman-on-new-testament-text.html

Is this what you mean, Glenn?

What do you think of this, then?

“In the first several centuries after Jesus’ ministry, the followers of the Nazarene engaged in fierce theological polemics with Jews, Gnostics, pagans and other Christians. They resorted to forgery, fabrication and character assassination to disparage their adversaries and bolster their own ranks, Ehrman writes.

Forgery, or writing under a false name, ultimately helped early Christians consolidate their fractured movement into a coherent theology. These letters, essays and treatises helped gloss over internal conflicts to discredit foes, to justify admitting non-Jews and to expand across the globe.

http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/02/06/968376/bible-writers-intended-to-deceive.html

I guess that if it follows that Ehrman is right about the insignificance of most textual differences, then what would it matter if the message is tainted will reams of forgeries?

Sorry about the cut and pasting, but I couldn’t have put it better myself. My advice – read Forged.

Can we get on to ethics and morals now?

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Second, you also fail to note that many of the incidents you mention fact were not endorsed by the RC church and in many cases outright opposed by it. The fact Crusaders or fanatics killed Jews or other Christian’s for example does not mean the Papacy or the RC supported or endorsed the killing of Jews or ordered it. In fact the Papacy and church authorities frequently worked to prevent these progroms and condemned them. But of course you don’t mention that. Similary the fact Charlegmegne did something does not mean the RC church did it or endorsed it. To go from the inference that a group of professing Catholics did X to the claim the RCC broke its own laws, does not follow. By the same reasoning I could say that because several people who are NZ citizens murdered last year, the NZ government commits murder. Despite the fact the government has passed laws against murder and attempts to prosecute those who violate these laws.

Finally, I can just as easily give a list of far worse statistics, for secular regimes which are much worse in the size and magnitude. Compare for example one year of the French Revolution to the Spanish Inquistion for its five hundred year history and you’ll find the Inquistion killed a fraction of the same number despite having the similar power avalible and significantly more time.

You have done nothing to show that the church dominated Europe for 1400 years converting everyone at sword point and killing dissenters. That’s fictional propaganda not credible history.

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If this is your claim, it is false. The data says exactly what I claimed, namely:

1) Although people sometimes use the language of “religious” terrorism, as it turns out virtually all such (known) terrorism is violence perpetuated by Sunni Muslims.
2) Although such appeals to religious violence are (admittedly in my own personal experience) made in the context of discussions between atheists/agnostics and Christians, the category devoted to (known) non-religious terrorism is listed as responsible for more than six and a half times the number of deaths, in 2010, as that associated with (known) acts of terrorism carried out by professing Christians.

This is a true reflection of what the data says. By changing tack and talking about 1) past regimes (outside the scope of this blog post) and 2) Your own opinion on the rationality of religion (although you say you have nothing to say about whether it’s true, only about whether there are any reality checks), RWA, you may have drawn attention away from these two clear contentions of mine (the subject of this blog post), but this is what I claimed, and it is borne out by the available evidence. As far as I am aware as I scan through the comments, no cogent reasons have been given for denying either of these two contentions.

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I’ve spent enough time and effort here. I’ve expressed my views, shown you where I think you are wrong, and I appreciate the fact that you and your other commenters have been civil and patent.

Thanks for being nice!

RWA

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But if for some reason you wanted to, you could always make a cogent case that all of the above actions are consistent with Christian teaching. That’ll be something to see!

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Year: 1095-9 First Crusade
Urban II (1088-99) calls for European knights to march on Jerusalem under Christian umbrella to wrest Holy Land from Turkish Muslims. Jews and dark-skinned Christians also targets.

Year: 1096 People’s Crusade
Catholic preacher Peter the Hermit (c1050-1115) leads 1000s of peasants in holy war on Belgrade, chief city of Orthodox Church after Constantinople.

Year: 1096 Yugoslavia
Amid confused fighting, Peter the Hermit’s peasant army accidentally slaughters 4,000 Christian residents of Zemun, Yugoslavia.

Year: 1096 Goose Crusade
Scores of German Jews are hacked or burned to death by Christian fanatics who follow goose “blessed by God”.
Year: 1096 Muslim slaughter
4,000,000 to 7,000,000 Muslims die as Peter the Hermit’s peasants follow Christian knights into Jerusalem; crusaders believe killing Muslims “good for soul”. I, myself, doubt the size of this one, it is unattributted and the numbers seem high. RWA

Year: 1096 Jewish slaughter
Estimated 12,000 Jews are slaughtered during first crusade; Historian Dagobert Runes estimates 3,500,000 Jews are killed during seven Holy Wars. 1.) (See:Kelsos/Islamkristen, ibidem, referring: S.Eidelberg, The Jews and the Crusaders, Madison 1977) (Thanks to contributing editor Hans H. Atrott)

Year: 1098 Antioch
Historian H Wollschlger estimates 100,000 Muslims, including women and children, were slaughtered by Christian crusaders at Turkish Antioch. (See: H.Wollschlaeger: Die bewaffneten Wallfahrten gen Jerusalem, Zurich 1973, page 32-35) (Thanks to contributing editor Hans H. Atrott)

Year: 1098 Marra
Historian H Wollschlger estimates 1000s were slaughtered by Christian crusaders at Maraat an-numan. (See: H.Wollschlaeger: Die bewaffneten Wallfahrten gen Jerusalem, Zurich 1973, page 36) (Thanks to contributing editor Hans H. Atrott)

–

Ok, I’m going to stop here. I could go on, and a vast majority of what is here is sourced and attributed. The fact is that, regardless of the “Canon Law” cited above, the RCC has throughout history, violated that law whenever it felt it was needful. Even today, with the pedophilia scandals, it violated its own law by ignoring priestly sexual activity, in spite of the violations of celibacy alone. Benedict himself signed the church document, written in Latin, instructing his bishops to ignore local secular law and handle the issues internally.

Even if forced conversion was illegal, it killed people for centuries for not converting.

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Year: 391 Temple visits
Theodosius prohibits visits to pagan temples and even merely looking at pagan statues becomes criminal offence. See: Milman’s History of Christianity, vol. iii., 64. Gibbon, Chap. xxviii or: G W Foote & J M Wheeler, Crimes of Christianity, London, Progessive Publishing Company, 1887, Chapter: 2, electronically published on: Source Link, last call on: 03/29/2008 (Thanks to contributing editor Hans H. Atrott)

Year: 395 Paganism prohibited
Theodosius introduces law making paganism criminal offence and orders banning of pagan events including Olympic Games. (See: G W Foote & J M Wheeler >> Crimes of Christianity , chapter: 2, on: Source Link, last call on: 03/29/2008. (Thanks to contributing editor Hans H. Atrott)

Year: 415 Hypatia
Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria (376-444), executes pagan philosopher Hypatia (375-415) for being woman going against God’s will by teaching men; Christian mob parades her mutilated body through Alexandrian streets. See: Sue Toohey, The important life & tragic death of Hypatia, by2003, on: Source Link , last call. 04/01/2008 and also K.Deschner, Opus Diaboli, Reinbek 1987, p. 19-25 (Thanks to contributing editor Hans H. Atrott)

Year: 448 Book burnings
Theodosius II (401-450) orders burning of all non-Christian books. Update: Among others, the book of famous ancient Greek philosopher Porphyry 232/3-304, “kata Christianos” (against the Christians) calling Christian gospels “no reports of occurrences but sheer contrivances.” (Thanks to contributing editor Hans H. Atrott)

Year: 694 Jewish enslavement
Fifth council of Toledo orders enslavement of Jews, their property confiscated and children forcibly baptized. (See: K.H. Deschner, K. H.Deschner, Abermals kraehte der Hahn, Stuttgart 1962, p. 445, see also: islamkristen, ibidem (Thanks to contributing editor Hans H. Atrott)

Year: 782 Charlemagne
Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne (c742-814) beheads 4500 Saxon rebels in one morning for refusing to convert to Christianity. See: William Manchester “A World Lit Only by Fire- The Medieval Mind and The Renaissance”. Little, Brown & Company, 1992 , or on: http://dim.com/~randl/tinq.htm“>Source Link last call on: 03/11/2008 (See: K. H. Deschner, Opus Diaboli, Reinbek 1987., p. 30, mentioned also on: [islamkristen] Fwd: Christian crimes against humanity throughout history, on: Source Link , last call on: 04/25/2008 (Thanks to contributing editor Hans H. Atrott)

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I gather that you don’t understand how science works. You perform an experiment to try to prove something does. If it fails, then you’ve got an indication that it doesn’t. If it succeeds, you’ve shown it does. If you make a positive claim, you’ve got to provide some proof of it.

“So just as atheism isn’t responsible for communism, neither is christianity responsible for anything done by a political entity that has nothing in common with christianity but a name.”

Only if that entity is acting for secular reasons. If it excuses its actions on religion, then it’s on christianity’s ledger, just as it is with islam. Even if it is not officially affiliated with a specific church. If it uses religion as an excuse, then that religion is responsible. Even Hindus use their religion as an excuse to kill.

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So just as atheism isn’t responsible for communism, neither is christianity responsible for anything done by a political entity that has nothing in common with christianity but a name.

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No, it is a claim regarding the natural world, that there is all there is, and it is a verifiable claim. Test it, retest it, do experiments and make observations, and all you will ever see is a natural world. Period, end of story. If you want to prove a supernatural claim, go ahead, but you’ll never be able to empirically defend it.

But my argument is not about “atheism”. It is about “secular” ideologies that make claims about the real world. Such as Communism and Capitalism. Both are secular, non-religious and do not make claims about the supernatural world. They are economic theories about human societies and how they work, and are bound by real world limitations.

Don’t read more into my arguments than there is. I didn’t mention atheism, somebody else did. I said secular.

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h, no. Atheism is not a claim “for” something supernatural. It is a complete denial of such claims…

That is a claim for something supernatural. More accurately religion makes metaphysical claims (there is/are supernatural beings), and atheism makes a counter supernatural claim (there are no supernatural beings).

And that makes Atheism, if it claims to deal with the “real natural world” (by that I am assuming science), false. If you only deal with scientifically testable, empirical, observable data, you need to avoid stepping out of that realm and making metaphysical claims, which are generally not scientifically testable, empirical, observable data.

Evolution, for example, is a scientific theory, not a metaphysical claim about whether there is a supernatural being(s). The religious and anti-religious need to bear that in mind.

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And yet you don’t allow us to make the distinction between a political regime (thinly disguised in religious garb) and the actual teachings of Christianity?

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I don’t see how one can evaluate the claims of Communism or Capitalism on a “supernatural claim ” of denial of the supernatural. Neither ideology depends on the supernatural either existing or not. That is simply a non sequitor. Both can easily be evaluated on real world conditions and whether their real world claims pass that reality check. In these two cases, one did, and one currently does. This has NOTHING to do with atheism, but is secular, or non-religious, in nature.

Please show how this is wrong.

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It is no more falsifiable or testable than any positive supernatural claim

Therefore any secular ideology that relies on the truth of this claim will be in exactly the same boat.

Now, an ideology that doesn’t rely on spiritual claims at all can be evaluated on other grounds, which is why you get capitalist christians, socialist christians, capitalist athiests and socialist atheists.

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Uh, no. Atheism is not a claim “for” something supernatural. It is a complete denial of such claims, so it deals solely with the real, natural world. Which is why such secular ideologies as Communism have to deal with those reality checks, and do, as it did, fail when they don’t deliver on their promises. Capitalism is another secular ideology which, so far, has met its promises, in large measure, and can be relatively successfully tweaked and controlled to continue to do so. As long as it meets its promises, it passes that reality check. No supernatural entity or places needed or promised.

But when a religion makes a claim about salvation and something like heaven and hell, or a wheel of life, one cannot verify its claims, since the proof isn’t revealed to the adherent until after death, when it is too late to come back and inform the rest of us of its truth or falsity. No amount of experimentation, examination or observation by human senses can, or has, verified any such claim. So, the sky is the limit. Hell, christianity itself speaks of belief on faith, which its own teachings say is belief without evidence. Like when the Pope revealed recently that there is, after centuries of teachings, no limbo, and, apparently never was. One gets to move the goal posts without penalty.

Which is kind of the point.

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Bingo. What we have here is someone who doesn’t want to grant this point so is trying to change the subject.

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But even if we excuse you here and grant your special pleading, there’s another gap in your logic here (which is kind of related to the first point). You say that religious claims about supernatural beings cannot be verified or falsified and thus not factually checked by the real world. Here you are just equivocating the “real” world with the “natural” world without justification and thus are begging the question for what constitutes the real world (I assume you think something like the scientific method is the only valid method of verifying what is ‘real’, which is a sad self-defeating view to say the least). Basically you’re saying that a particular world view/ideology must be compatible with atheism, ie secular, in order to safegaurd people from a supposed infinite capacity find motivation to defend it. Apart from a rather bad circular argument, you’ve given us no reason to think this.

For instance, many of the attacks that Islamic groups are blamed for may be actually political in nature, against other factions of Islam, and may have no religious motives at all.

I’m glad you acknowledge this point, whilst ironically missing Glenn’s point entirely. What you said actually complements the purpose of his post, ie to illustrate the problem of appealing to the idea that religion is especially dangerous in influencing terrorism. Glenn’s not trying to prove that Christianity is better than Islam or Secular groups, just that these stats show that the aforementioned appeal is a bad argument in the context of atheist/christian discussions. If anything you’ve highlighted the real culprit, ie politics, which is something relevant to everyone.

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[Dawkins] doesn’t claim to be a philosopher and usually is very tentative about commenting on areas outside his specialties.

LOL.

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Not at all. Truth or falsity don’t matter. The point is they all have that same characteristic, which is the claim about supernatural beings or places. Those claims cannot be verified or falsified. Therefor, the claimants can’t be fact-checked, so there is no way for the real world to provide the reality check that all other ideologies, such as Communism, for instance, are subject to. Therefor, there are no limits to what they can claim or to what extremes they can go in defense of or to spread their theology. Of course, if one then examines the different groups for cultural and/or social differences, based on real world conditions, there will be differences in how they react from time to time. for instance, evangelicals in this country have taken part in a backlash in recent decades, that have resulted in a more fundamentalist reaction to the election is 2010, one that is completely in opposition to the majority of the voters in this country, according to poll after poll. But they defend it on religious grounds, not practical, political grounds.

Don’t conflate that with my second point, which is that the data doesn’t say what you want it to say. I did NOT say it shouldn’t be “divided up”, I said that the data isn’t necessarily saying what you want it to say between the different categories. You are trying to take those numbers to prove that christianity is not as bad as Islam or secular/political/anarchist groups, but because of those pesky cultural/social/legal differences between WHERE the data is being collected, the data in one place doesn’t say the same thing about one group that it may about another. The report clearly notes that the reasons for the various attacks it reports on aren’t always clear or even reported on, and often may be missing entirely. The particular graph you cherry picked doesn’t even speak to motives or goals of the various individual attacks (only responsible groups), so you are simply showing raw data that hasn’t been examined or analyzed for the results you are looking to show. For instance, many of the attacks that Islamic groups are blamed for may be actually political in nature, against other factions of Islam, and may have no religious motives at all. This graph does not show that data. Only the group of origin.

See what I mean?

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All religions have one common characteristic. They make claims about the supernatural. Despite all of the differences in their specific claims, that one thing – that they make uncheckable, unverifiable claims about beings and places that do not exist in the natural world.

I don’t care what your particular religious beliefs are, but to all other folks that DON’T believe like you do, your claims DO seem just as ridiculous as, for instance, Islam.

I get it. You think all religions are false, so you think it’s acceptable to treat them as the same. Understood. But to use this as grounds for saying that the report should be altered to reflect that judgement of yours, pushing all religions together as one, is allowing your bias to interfere with your interpretation of data – and that is the problem.

Maybe this example will help: I believe that Islam is wrong, and atheism is wrong. Their stance on reality is false. But I would never dream of taking the licence to say “therefore they are both the same” and fudging them together in data sets so that nearly ALL terrorism was carried out by the group that includes secularists. That would allow my bias to skew the information I was presenting, which is what you’re doing when you say that this data should not be divided up, and the report itself should treat all religions as the same.

See what I mean?

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“This report is provided for statistical purposes only. The statistical information contained in the Annex is based on factual reports from a variety of open sources that may be of varying credibility. Any assessments regarding the nature of the incidents or the factual circumstances thereof are offered only as part of the analytic work product of the National Counterterrorism Center and may not reflect the assessments of other departments and agencies of the United States Government. Nothing in this report should be construed as a determination that individuals associated with the underlying incidents are guilty of terrorism or any other criminal offense.”

There’s more, and what it means is that they do not adjust the data for any kind of specific data analysis. It’s just raw data, and it isn’t even gathered in any particularly rigorous manner.

Without the kind of adjustments I mentioned, the report doesn’t prove anything that you allege. It’s just raw numbers, and isn’t proof of anything.

Did you even read this quote? It’s to do with the exact nature of specific incidents and how these can’t be inferred from the stats, not that the stats mean nothing. If you read the following paragraph in the report, you would have noticed

In deriving its figures for incidents of terrorism, NCTC in 2005 adopted the definition of
“terrorism” that appears in the 22 USC § 2656f(d)(2), i.e., “premeditated, politically
motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or
clandestine agents.

So I don’t exactly see how or why adjusting the data for “cultural differences” or “social conditions” would make any meaningful difference to the data and hence to the observations made by Glenn.

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http://www.amazon.co.uk/Penguin-Historical-Atlas-Medieval-World/dp/0141014490

“For most of the Middle Ages, popes had little authority outside Rome. The Church was largely run by bishops at regional level. This suited most secular rulers, who relied on their bishops to administer regional government since they, unlike most secular lords, tended to be well educated, and could not because of their celibacy, found dynasties…In time, the investiture ceremony, wherein a bishop was presented with the symbols of his office, came to include an oath of allegiance to his secular overlord. By the 11th century, the ceremony, and often the selection of the candidate himself, had fallen to imperial or royal representatives.”

Far from the church ‘dominating’ Europe, it was far more often the case that European lords, and in particular the Holy Roman Emperor, dominated the church. If you think about it this should actually be quite obvious. Who, in general, is going to decide the appointment of the bishop? An old man in Rome or the local lord with his army?

My authors, Andrew Jotishky and Caroline Hull, note this situation led to a ‘reform movement’ in the latter 11th century of the papacy, whereby reforming popes “…informed by monastic ideals rather than by the traditions of the secular clergy…” attempted to rid the Church of practices such as “…clerical marriage, simony (the buying and selling of clerical offices) and lay investiture of bishops.” Suffice to say this led to conflict with the Holy Roman Emperors (eg:Henry IV) who argued that “Our Lord Jesus Christ summoned us to kingship [Romans 13?]; he did not summon you to priesthood…” I think it is clear that Church institution was never run purely, or even mostly, by religious conviction per se. There was a lot more going on.

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The fact is that for a period of at least 1400 years, Christianity was the dominant religion in Europe, enforced by church authority which at times lead to punishments such as prison, exile, torture, strangulation and burning. Among other “delightful” methods of bringing the sinners to Christ.

Actually that again is false, Canon law forbade forced conversions of pagans and they were prohibited by the church. In one of the few incidents where this occurred under Charlemegne the church authorities condemned it.
The punishments of exile, torture, strangulation and burning, were introduced as punishments for *heresy* by secular kings in the 12th century. For much of the 1400 years you refer to such punishments did not exist
Moreover for the few hundred years they do exist, they were not enforced by the church authority, the church only had the authority to try heretics, not execute them. The punishment of burning in fact came from roman law. Moreover, recent research into the Inquisition based on the actual archives as opposed to 17th century propaganda tacts show that even for those tried for heresy execution and torture was not the norm bad made up a tiny fraction of cases, in most cases people were not executed or strangled or burnt or tortured at all. This compares very favourably to the normal judicial practise secular law where torture and execution was far more common for many crimes.
So it’s hard to justify the claim that such violence was imposed by the church on the secular culture by the church for 1400 years. It more accurate to say that such violence was in fact a normal part of secular civil law with regards to most crimes. After the 12th century, the church instigated tribunals which collaborated in the execution of heretics but which also severely mitigated the violence and abuses involved. Of course this was wrong, but that does not justify misrepresenting history, or the facts.
And of course in the 500 years during which the Spanish Inquistion existed in Spain 5000 were executed by the tribunal. This is terrible, but its really

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Atheism is an unverifiable claim about the supernatural. Equally unverifiable, and equally used as a justification for behavior.

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No, but your denial of it is an example of yours.

I’ll try this again.

All religions have one common characteristic. They make claims about the supernatural. Despite all of the differences in their specific claims, that one thing – that they make uncheckable, unverifiable claims about beings and places that do not exist in the natural world.

I don’t care what your particular religious beliefs are, but to all other folks that DON’T believe like you do, your claims DO seem just as ridiculous as, for instance, Islam. I suspect that the Hindu of the world get a particular chuckle about certain aspects of the different Western religions, but then, you do about theirs, huh?

So, that’s my point. ALL religions make unverifiable claims about the supernatural. Therefor, those claims are bereft of any kind of reality check. Any claims made by their adherents can be as outlandish as they wish, and nobody can verify or disprove them.

The second point I made is that the numbers you cite are not adjusted for culture differences, different legal systems, social conditions or a dozen other things that would make them better for the point you wish to make.

From the report’s disclaimer pages:

“This report is provided for statistical purposes only. The statistical information contained in the Annex is based on factual reports from a variety of open sources that may be of varying credibility. Any assessments regarding the nature of the incidents or the factual circumstances thereof are offered only as part of the analytic work product of the National Counterterrorism Center and may not reflect the assessments of other departments and agencies of the United States Government. Nothing in this report should be construed as a determination that individuals associated with the underlying incidents are guilty of terrorism or any other criminal offense.”

There’s more, and what it means is that they do not adjust the data for any kind of specific data analysis. It’s just raw data, and it isn’t even gathered in any particularly rigorous manner.

Without the kind of adjustments I mentioned, the report doesn’t prove anything that you allege. It’s just raw numbers, and isn’t proof of anything.

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That’s a laugh, to claim that the fact that the Pope couldn’t live in Rome meant he didn’t control his own church, and by extension, much of daily life around the known world at the time. Even at times when the Papacy was in flux or even when there were two of them, the bureaucracy of the church kept the daily functions going, and thus, the daily control over the lives of most Europeans.

The fact is that for a period of at least 1400 years, Christianity was the dominant religion in Europe, enforced by church authority which at times lead to punishments such as prison, exile, torture, strangulation and burning. Among other “delightful” methods of bringing the sinners to Christ.

Christianity was responsible for the forcible, violent expulsion of “pagan” religion from Europe and most of the Mediterranean known world. Don’t try to deny it, it happened.

“That’s not what you said, what you said was that “they [the RC church]managed to take man’s knowledge of health care alone back to stone age levels.”

Ok, a bit of hyperbole. But the fact is, medical knowledge WAS reduced, and the lack of medical schools, such as the Romans had, was responsible for that. I suppose you’ll deny that the church halted any teaching institutions that didn’t teach church doctrine now. That resulted in a reduction in public health that undeniably resulted in uncountable deaths, suffering and disease for centuries. The facts are that medical knowledge wasn’t advanced in any measurable way until the late middle ages, if not later. Heck, they were still bleeding folks in George Washington’s day.

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This thread is itself a perfect counterexample to the claim that rationality and reason are the domain of atheists, and emotional and fictitious outbursts are the domain of the ‘religious’. So thanks for that.

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This is where things stop until you offer something. Otherwise, you’ll need to step back and say “Sorry, I have nothing. I referred to textual variants as though they showed something, but I admit it, I can’t use them to show anything.” Then we will be able to continue. But you can’t just put the implied argument out there, refuse to ever defend it – even when I ask you to, and then keep appealing back to it as you now have.

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No I not trying to debate rhetorically, but like me, you are aware of the principle of parsimony, Occam’s Razor. Doing away with as many supernatural entities and replacing the facts with frugal concepts should mean that a grand study of texts should be unnecessary.

If YOU believe that Christ rose from the dead you are making an extraordinary claim. All the so-called ‘evidence’ I hear about ‘eye-witness testimony’ and empty tombs does not prove a man rose from the dead, does it? The fact that a story of a man walking on water does not prove this supernatural event to be true, does it?

The textual differences is one of MANY evidences that parsimony, and even scepticism, is likely the only correct reaction in an age of science to a 2000-year old account.

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“As for those who have supposedly met Richard Carrier, we merely demand that his existence be established entirely on the testimony of those who disbelieve in his existence–a reasonable enough request, wouldn’t you agree?”

I laughed at this one.

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No it isn’t. For you to say that since Islam and Christianity are both false they are both basically the same, you are in fact expressing your own bias against religion in general. That observation is not a statement of my own bias.

And as for “proving” my own claims, I have already established their credibility with evidence. The specific claims that I have made in this blog post are backed up with empirical data from the National Counterterrorism Center. There is a link so that you can check for yourself.

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You don’t say what’s false vs. true. Do you deny that the RCC controlled Europe for at least that long?

Yes, the RC did not *control* or *dominate* Europe for 1400 years. For several centuries the Papacy lived in exile due to political opposition. By Régine Pernou notes this claim is a myth in “Those terrible middle ages debunking the myths.”

Do you deny that the state of medical knowledge during the Dark Ages through the beginnings of the Enlightenment was a bare fraction of what the Romans were aware of, based on actual published documentation written by Roman medical authorities?

That’s not what you said, what you said was that “they [the RC church]managed to take man’s knowledge of health care alone back to stone age levels.
This is not the claim that state of medical knowledge during the Dark Ages was lower than roman times. It’s the claim that the RC brought this about and also that the knowledge was at stone age levels.”

First, the picture of the early medieval history as “the dark ages” is highly disputed. Numbers and Lindberg note that recent historical research suggests that this portrayal of the early middle ages as “the dark ages” is a caricature. (David C Lindberg “The Medieval Church Encounters the Classical Tradition: Saint Augustine, Roger Bacon and the Handmaiden Metaphor” inWhen Science & Christianity Meet, ed. David C. Lindberg & Ronald L. Numbers (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2003) 7-8). A conclusion shared by the studies of Henri Pirenne (A History of Europe from the End of the Roman World in the West to the Beginning of Western States, (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1958)) and Marc Bloch (Feudal Society, (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1961)) and Richard Hodge (“The Not So Dark Ages,”Archaeology 51 (September/October 1998).

Second, even if medical knowledge at this time was a “bare fraction of what the Romans were aware” it does not follow the RC church caused this. That commits the post hoc ergo goc fallacy The claim the church suppressed scientific knowledge during the middle ages is known as the conflict thesis and its pretty much rejected and discredited by historians today. It was popular in the 19th century but has been thoroughly discredited. Carrier is probably one of the few to defend anything like this. See http://bedejournal.blogspot.co.nz/2010_09_01_archive.html

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Your tactic here appears to involve making assertion about history to attack Christianity and then claiming that assertions about history are illogical. I am sorry but *that* is illogical.

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And that statement is an expression of *your* own bias. Prove your assertion that it is. Try logic instead of a simple statement.

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You don’t say what’s false vs. true. Do you deny that the RCC controlled Europe for at least that long? Do you deny that the state of medical knowledge during the Dark Ages through the beginnings of the Enlightenment was a bare fraction of what the Romans were aware of, based on actual published documentation written by Roman medical authorities?

Or do you deny that that lack could have resulted in what is probably an unknowable number of deaths and suffering because of such lack of knowledge?

Much of this has been documented by Dr. Richard Carrier, an expert on Roman science and technology.

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All historically false claims. Try reading a reputable medieval historian such as Edward Grant.

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It’s not as though we are saying that an intangible corporate entity is thrown in to a lake of fire. Rather, the two horned monsters, two tangible things, are thrown into a lake of fire, and that is a symbolic representation of what happens to the intangible things they represent.

Consider in chapter 12, how the dragon knocks 1/3 of the stars from the sky. We don’t ask how the devil, represented by a dragon, knocks physical stars out of the sky with a physical tail despite being a spiritual being. Rather, we see that the whole thing is a symbolic picture of something (generally believed to be the Devil convincing some of the angels in heaven to sin, their “fall” illustrated as stars being knocked out of the sky by a dragon).

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(the inverted commas are because, in the case of Jesus, it cannot be determined accurately, due to 300,00 textual differences and the time involved for the first ‘gospel account,’ whether it’s history or tradition).

Frank, do you see what is happening now? At least twice I have asked you to actually get into the raw data if you’re going to use this argument. The figure of 300,000 is clearly important to you, so I have asked you to make the actual case for your objection by studying the variants and presenting evidence that the number – and most importantly, the kind – of variants in the Greek New Testament cast doubt over the reliability of the transmission of the meaning of the New Testament. Each time you have refused.

And yet now – remember, while refusing to discuss the evidence – you are starting to “cheat” by appealing to this number of 300,000 as though it actually does cast some important doubt on… well, something.

So this is where the discussion comes to a natural pause and I wait for you to go back and make the case I asked you to make earlier. Make an evidence based case that the number and nature of textual variants somehow casts real doubt over whether or not we can know what the New testament documents first said. Use examples, please. Because I can tell that you’re going to keep thinking that you’ve got an argument there, and only when you force yourself to actually make that argument will you see that it doesn’t work.

Thanks.

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OK, well this is simply false, and is just an expression of your own bias – It’s all nonsense, which makes it all the same. Thanks for playing.

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As ‘salvation originates with the Jews,’ Christianity has inherited an ‘account’ or ‘accounts’ of the Messiah via Jewish oral tradition. As Jewish history is exegetical in nature (interpretable and growing to each generation and in difference in circumstances) what are we actually to believe, as the FACTS show that an apparently evolved set of differing texts have been bequeathed to posterity?

Ehrman lists the many overt differences actually in the telling of the story of Jesus that differs from gospel to gospel AND points out that the writers didn’t appear until much later bearing the name apparently of a genuine disciple or apostle (to ‘authenticate’ their ‘authorship’). Add to this that they wrote in modern koine Greek and there are good reasons to question their authenticity.

I don’t think the Robin Hood analogy is too far from the truth. Salvation is a popular notion, and so are heroes. As you point out, that there is a mere 70 years (‘mere’ by your reckoning) separating the first reference to Hood and the first written account of Jesus.

Of course, Robin Hood didn’t start a religion but he did spawn many movies.

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And I explained why your reasoning is wrong, and it is wrong because at the basis of their belief system, they all believe the same bullshit. They all believe in magic, invisible beings who have immense powers, and because they do, you’ve got to surrender your entire life to that power. That attitude is dangerous, and allows adherents of any religion, no matter how benign, to act as if their fairy tales are true, and that makes them do irrational stuff. Even if it isn’t killing people and blowing up skyscrapers, christians today are still doing things and causing one of the most damaging political fights in generations, since it is preventing us from acting rationally in fixing the economy.

And yes, because moderate christians go along with the evangelical BS that you’ve got to vote for another christian harms our democracy, while it may not be adding to your precious death totals, the damage is worse than any single terrorist attack except perhaps 9/11.

It isn’t the deaths that matter so much as the permission to act irrationally in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary that religion permits. Yeah, yeah, non-theists can act irrationally too. But, like I noted, at some point, people making claims about earthly, tangible things at some point have to show proof that their claims make sense, or they begin to lose followers. Not so, religion.

The damage is much, much worse when you can just claim that “god said it!”

Which is why I said that the numbers you present mean, essentially, nothing, because harm isn’t just the death your numbers represent. Harm is also suffering, pain, poverty, and marginalization based on physical characteristics you cannot control, such as skin color, sexual preference and sex.

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I freely confess I am a newbie and will read this tonight when I get home. I honestly don’t understand annihilationism outside of focusing on destruction and ruin or sprang and gomorrrah imagery. Anyway, looking forward to your view responding to the above.

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Gabriel, as these criteria are useful I see no reason not to apply them to the study of other purported historical persons such as Richard Carrier. Only the died in the wool historical-Carrier fundy faithful would be motivated to not use them.

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FYI, the criterion of embarrassment or dissimilarity is not used outside Biblical scholarship so the argument can’t be used to attest Dr Carrier’s earthly existence as he isn’t mentioned in any ancient Biblical document.

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So? Nobody claims that the relatively very short time lapse verifies all the details, so I’m not sure why this matters. But you’ve basically granted that Robin Hood comparison isn’t very good. Even the material you quoted says that the first reference to a literary tradition of Robin Hood doesn’t appear until 1362–c. 1386, more than a century after allusions to the name appear. So I just don’t see what is established by any of this, other than that they may have been a historical person behind the Robin Hood stories. The timing however is much longer, and the details very sparse (in the earliest references to his name) – there was a guy, he was a criminal. It hardly compares to the depth of biographical detail detailed within the lifetime of Jesus’ contemporaries.

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Of course, I’m not comparing the two characters in any way other than to state 30 years after the events of Jesus written ALLEGEDLY by disciples of Jesus today is simply not enough to verify the truthfulness of the all stories in all the details – especi. Here’s why:

Robin Hood (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Hood#Early_references)

“The oldest references to Robin Hood are not historical records, or even ballads recounting his exploits, but hints and allusions found in various works. From 1228 onwards, the names ‘Robinhood’, ‘Robehod’ or ‘Robbehod’ occur in the rolls of several English Justices. The majority of these references date from the late 13th century. Between 1261 and 1300, there are at least eight references to ‘Rabunhod’ in various regions across England, from Berkshire in the south to York in the north.[26]

In a petition presented to Parliament in 1439, the name is used to describe an itinerant felon. The petition cites one Piers Venables of Aston, Derbyshire, “who having no liflode, ne sufficeante of goodes, gadered and assembled unto him many misdoers, beynge of his clothynge, and, in manere of insurrection, wente into the wodes in that countrie, like as it hadde be Robyn Hude and his meyne.”[27] The name was still used to describe sedition and treachery in 1605, when Guy Fawkes and his associates were branded “Robin Hoods” by Robert Cecil.

The first allusion to a literary tradition of Robin Hood tales occurs in William Langland’s Piers Plowman (c. 1362–c. 1386) in which Sloth, the lazy priest, confesses: “I kan [know] not parfitly [perfectly] my Paternoster as the preest it singeth,/ But I kan rymes of Robyn Hood and Randolf Erl of Chestre.”[28]

The first mention of a quasi-historical Robin Hood is given in Andrew of Wyntoun’s Orygynale Chronicle, written in about 1420. The following lines occur with little contextualisation under the year 1283:

Lytil Jhon and Robyne Hude
Wayth-men ware commendyd gude
In Yngil-wode and Barnysdale
Thai oysyd all this tyme thare trawale.”

Why do they keep making films about Robin Hood? Because it inspires us, moves us, brings out, albeit reluctantly, the nobility that humans are capable of.

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“Lastly, the OP is comparing modern terrorism stats, and those stats clearly show religion to be the hands down worse numerically. I don’t know why you separate christianity out, as it clearly has as little of a reality check as islam,”

As I said, this is purely about the data. Contrary to your suggestion, it was not I who separated the categories in this way. This is the way the source provided the data, and I have not manipulated the way it was presented.

The reason this is significant was actually explained in the blog post. It is often the case that when atheists/agnostics seek to play the “religion is dangerous” card, they are actually in dialogue with Christians. What this data shows is that it is a mistake to lump together different religions as though “they’re all basically the same thing anyway.” This is as much of a mistake as treating, say, a Western liberal democracy and a fascist dictatorship as basically the same and lumping them in together because they’re both political.

Lastly, if you think the raw data presented simply in terms of numbers “means nothing,” then I trust you are not someone who ever appeals to the numbers of people harmed by religion as though it shows something about religion. While I don’t think it shows anything about the truth of religious or secular outlooks, I do think shows something, namely that those who make this sort of attack when discussing religion with Christians are often quite ignorant of the facts.

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As long as you’re consistent . . .

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If you are going to make a comparison, you need to allow for cultural differences, political differences, and differences in population numbers and density in order to level the field of comparison.

This simple comparison of numbers is simplistic and means nothing.

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You are comparing apples to oranges.

And no, my remarks were not a tangent, they are central to the issue. The fact is that, as religion is concerned with imaginary figures, and other ideologies are not (Communism, for instance, is an economic theory), it is reasonable to note that given the same amount of control over a similar population, religion would be worse, since there is no reality check. Eventually, Communism failed because it was concerned with earthly issues – economics – and it failed because it failed to pony up real world results. That failure came quickly, on a relative historical time scale.

Religion has no such limits, because there is no check on what they can claim, which cannot be compared to real conditions, since their claims are imaginary in nature. In other words, you’ve gotta die to see if it works!

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t condone painting a group of people with the same brush as the extremists of that group. But my point isn’t against the people, it is against the ideology and what it is capable of. In other words, what it ALLOWS its adherents to do and what they have done as a result in the past.

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It seems to me that you’re setting the bar to prove your point.

Are you arguing ONLY the number of deaths or worse atrocities? On one hand, that makes the numbers much worse, because you are comparing atrocities which occurred at widely differing times with widely differing population totals.

The number of people available to Stalin upon which to commit his atrocities was much greater than that available to the RCC, unless they were willing to completely denude all of Europe of people. Stalin simply quarantined Ukraine and let twenty million people starve to death. Easy to do within just a few weeks. He didn’t even have to waste bullets. The total number of people he had left in the USSR was more than sufficient to keep the country running, and, indeed, to repopulate Ukraine.

During the periods in which the RCC had sufficient secular power to have committed such atrocities (and we all know they were fully capable of such barbarism), there wasn’t sufficient population for them to have affected that large a number of people. But the RCC had full control of Europe for at least 1400 years. In that period, they managed to take man’s knowledge of health care alone back to stone age levels. The numbers of people who died within that time, as a percentage of population, and as a result of that alone, would, I am sure, rival that of Stalin’s actions. Add in the rest of the body of scientific knowledge the Romans had and used (including running water and sewage, including indoor plumbing) and the affects on public health alone over 1400 years is devastating. The percentage of the population in Germany during the 30 years war (which was purely religious in nature) that died was very high in places, and several cities were completely wiped off the map, including women and children.

Soviet control over the USSR topped merely 80 years, roughly. A blip compared to the RCC’s control of Europe.

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Corey and Wbf,

As we all know, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and, based on Tim McGrew’s analysis, the existence of Richard Carrier certainly qualifies as an extraordinary claim. Have you, then, verified that the video and written testimony attributed to Dr. Carrier actually meets this reasonably high standard?

Until you meet him in person (and verify that the experience is not a group hallucination, which we all know is much more probable than his existence, since any explanation is more probable than his existence), isn’t it rational to hold to the default position, that of A-Carrierism?

Glenn,

I think you and Tim McGrew have gone well above the call of duty in providing positive evidence against the existence of Richard Carrier, since, as we all know, A-Carrierism isn’t actually a belief at all, and therefore requires no argument, much less evidence. It’s simply a lack of belief.

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Firstly, no you wouldn’t. In order to show that secular groups are responsible for more terrorism-related deaths, you only need to show that they are – in fact – responsible for more terrorism related deaths (remember the topic – terrorism deaths). But to jump over to your new topic, wrong again. In order to show that secular regimes have carried out worse atrocities than religious movements in the modern world, all you would need to show is that they had carried out worse atrocities than religious groups. That’s it. Once you’ve shown that, QED.

Secondly, to go on to say that since a movement was about promoting communism, it wasn’t really doing what it did for a secular purpose, you seem to be simply wrong. Secular here means non-religious, and unless communism is a religion, you must accept that it is a secular cause – a cause free of religious belief.

Lastly, it’s a waste of time using this as an opportunity to go off on a tangent about how religion is all about imaginary figures. This simply changes the subject. That subject is that while some people seem to speak (to Christians) as though religion is uniquely dangerous and can lead to awful things like fanaticism and terrorism, the empirical data shows that really there’s one specific religion of which this is more true than other movements (religious and otherwise), and when it comes to Christianity, non-religious groups have a worse modern track record (2010) than Christianity does. Ridiculing the truth claims of religion as you end up doing is simply irrelevant rhetoric. This is about the data and what it shows.

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Well Frank, that’s what you said. You said that you made “claim to not knowing if we’re reading the original manuscripts that come down to us.” In textual criticism, when we talk about “manuscripts” we are talking about the actual physical objects. I assume now that you really mean “original reading.” A “reading” is a particular wording in one manuscript or many, and it is different wordings that we are referring to when we talk about textual variants.

You now claim that it is obvious that if we have thousands of textual variants, it must be true that the actual message will evolve over time. But this isn’t obvious over time. This is why my questions to you mattered: What kind of variants do we have, and in each case what actual difference do they make?

Only when you seriously make this a matter of discussing evidence will you appreciate why this argument has no real weight, which is why I have insisted that you do the work: Get into the evidence and start presenting it, and only then we can discuss what significance that evidence has.

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It seems likewise obvious to me that if you have hundreds of thousands of textual variants in lanquage that the original message is going to evolve over time. Nature shows this to be the case. What the original writers meant will eventually be lost, even if you have the most accurate of copyists.

Factor in too that culture itself is a variant, the expectations of expectant people (though the military messiah did not emerge), the fact that accounts of miracles can be falsified, and the length of time (30 to 60 years after the alleged events)that is involved; how can we possibly accept that things happened in EXACTLY the way the gospels.

The biggest cliffhanger, though, is the possibility that some or many of the New Testament books could be fake. Ehrman describes beautifully in his book, Forged, how the ACTUAL religious and political situation PROBABLY looked back then and wipes away any modern stereotype we may have learned in church about these writings.

Pilate said, “what is truth.” Yes, what is it, if we accept Biblical truth, then don’t bother looking scientifically deeper into these issue. But you and I know that, as modern persons, we nowadays require a much higher criteria of proof.

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The links in the ‘plot thickens’ blog post check out too.

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wbf,

1) The key word in your comment here (if indeed it was really you who wrote it) is “attributed.” In the history of myth it’s common for people to “attribute” things to the mythic hero-sage-saviour that they simply didn’t do, drawing on a whole host of similar figures in the thought world of the time.

2) It’s easy to talk about eyewitness reports as verifiable. But clearly those who claim to have seen “Richard Carrier (pbuh) have a polemical interest in doing so. perhaps he is their mythic hero-warrior-god. Or maybe they are re-telling a creedal version of an account of divine warfare where they depict themselves as witnessing his defeat. Such things happen all the time in myth.

3) When it comes to (alleged) recordings, we have to be very careful. Remember the principle that at most points in history there were no Richard Carriers, no amazing scholars who became world renown philosophers immediate on graduation who devastated their theological opponents. I think it’s wise to proceed as though “No Richard Carriers then implies none now.” Hence, any alternative explanation is intrinsically more probably than an *actual* Richard Carrier being the person on camera/audio.

4) Indeed, this is a major conflict. For the powers that Carrier is alleged to possess are so wildly implausible that we would expect a “supernatural power” explanation. That we do not have one is a major conflict in the Carrier tradition.

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Seems like a decent bloke.

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Corey,

I suppose that’s what we could expect from the faithful. First, let’s get it straight about Lincoln’s name: “Ab”–a father; “Abram”–a great father; “Abraham”–a father of a great multitude; Lin (from Greek linon)–long, extended; Coln (from Greek kolos)–mutilated. So here we have, in his very name, the principal facts about his life: father of a great people, extended [either physically (very tall), or temporally (elected President twice), or in fame], and assassinated.

As for Carrier’s name, “Rich” suggests an affinity for money, and rumor has it that this character charges for his writing by the word. (Nice work if you can get it!) “Carrier” resonates on multiple letters, as an obvious pun given his supposed tour of duty in the Coast Guard, or as a more subtle play on words for those familiar with the notion of a meme.

Photographs are easily faked. As for those who have supposedly met Richard Carrier, we merely demand that his existence be established entirely on the testimony of those who disbelieve in his existence–a reasonable enough request, wouldn’t you agree?

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One can argue as to which is worse – a greater number of deaths in a short period, or the complete subjugation of the entire Western World for almost two thousand years, with all the misery, death and deliberately inflicted suffering extending over the population thereof for that entire time, but the fact is, the occurrence of one does not excuse the occurrence of the other!

The two regimes which inflicted such widespread death in the twentieth century were opposed and destroyed by forces both internal and external, and neither lasted for a historically significant period – less than a hundred years for the longer, less than two dozen for the other – and yet, the “regime” apologists seek to excuse lasted for at least 1600 years, kept itself in power through force, intimidation, murder, genocide, child indoctrination, torture, summary executions and who knows what all else, and the result of its power was the destruction of the highest form of human technology and application of science the world had yet seen, with the forced subjugation of the entire population of a significant portion of the world’s surface for that entire period. The suffering that resulted from the destruction of human knowledge in the realm of health care alone is unmatched by anything the twentieth century could boast in the category of human cruelty to itself. To add in the loss of the rest of scientific knowledge the Romans had learned and used is to compound that suffering to an astonishing degree.

I know of few humanists who would argue that a world without religion would be some kind of tolerant utopia. Humanity is still tribal in nature, and can easily be led into intolerant pathways. The point of having a world without religion is to put a reality check back in place. Religion has no reality check, since it is based on imaginary figures who cannot be detected.

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“Was Winnie the Pooh a Good Muslim?”
http://www.tektonics.org/guest/pooh.html

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Actually it reminds me of “New Directions in Pooh Studies: Überlieferungs- und religionsgeschichtliche Studien zum Pu-Buch.” It’s a parody of the licence taken by critical Old Testament scholarship as applied to the stories about Pooh Bear (aka Winnie ther Pooh).

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It was fun.

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Andrew – Tim wrote it!

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Furthermore, ikons of Richard Carrier look vaguely like the Karate Kid, who was a popular mythic figure of Generation X children. Richard carrier alleged age is around that of Generation X. With such clear similarities, it is obvious that the Richard Carrier Myth began as a copy cat of the Karate Kidd.

Miss your hair, Glenn.

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Very well done Glenn! very creative XD

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By way of a postscript: related to the problems argued by Dickie C and his blogger cronies, you may appreciate this appreciation by Joseph Hoffmann of the New Oxonion:

http://rjosephhoffmann.wordpress.com/2012/04/23/mythtic-pizza-and-cold-cocked-scholars/

Enjoy. Apologies if you have already read it.

Bless you,
Angus

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If that’s what you think Ehrman said, look again. Nobody thinks that we are reading the “original manuscripts.” They perished a very long time ago. No, the issue is that,as Ehrman points out, there is a large number of textual variants – that is, differences between one copy and another. These can generally be grouped together into “textual traditions,” where we can see which one was copied from which, and group them into families based on common readings.

But of course, none of this is news. Christians have known this for centuries. Just putting it out there like it’s a major issue and I need to deal with it is fairly pointless. So here’s what you need to do if you think I should offer a case in response: Make a case to respond to. OK, so you’ve started with the fact as noted by Ehrman (and every single Christian new Testament scholar that I know of as well) that there are lots of textual variants. So? What sort of variants are they? What do they tell us? What has been changed, and how? And what difference does it make?

Obviously I’m not just going to say “No. There are no textual variants.” There are thousands. But what am I meant to be debating against? What’s your actual claim here, Frank, and how would you defend it? Stated simply: What are you asking me to deny?

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Has the story of Robin Hood come down to us accurately? I don’t think so, and yet the ‘account’ is MUCH newer than the claims of miracle-working and salvation to mankind. What about king Arthur? Better?

I must conclude, therefore, by the absence of debate, that you have no answer for me.

Lions 2 Christians 0

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But it’s not enough to drop Bart Ehrman’s name and give a number and end it there. Please tell us what type of variations these are in the text. Give examples. I’m doing this to help you to see that once you actually start examining the evidence that you think is there but which you haven’t looked at for yourself, you’ll see the evidence is actually not as shocking as you thought. But so far you haven’t even described what the evidence is in any detail (I haven’t seen any examples from you), or what you think it shows.

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I realise you’re busy, but as I gather this is more than a hobby and actually is an apologist site, perhaps I could persuade you actually to have a dialogue. You never know, you might save a soul.

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